RIAA Petitions Judges to Lower Artist Royalties

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Aggressively litigious group has claimed to protect musicians in the past. Now believes musicians deserve less for "innovative" music distribution.

By Gerry Block

The RIAA rose to public prominence around the year 2000 when the growth of internet file sharing and music piracy was blamed for rapidly declining album sales at the time. The RIAA's subsequent highly publicized and aggressive litigious action against those the group identified as distributors of copyrighted music, which has famously included grandmothers, single mothers in economic hardship, and children, won the organization little sympathy from the general public. While protecting copyrights is a fully legitimate concern, many believe the piracy that blossomed in first blush of the Napster and KaZaa was primarily due to the fact that there were no viable legal means to acquire music in mp3 format via the internet. That changed when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, the subsequent massive success of which would seem to illustrate consumers' willingness to pay for music files on the internet if they are conveniently available.

In publicly defending its strong arm tactics and stated desire to scare consumers into absolute compliance, the RIAA has long cited the negative repercussions of piracy and lost revenue upon the recording artists that pour their talent into making the music that people like to hear. It's a sympathetic defense, yet in the past week the RIAA has made it quite clear whose profits the group is truly out to defend, and it's certainly not the artists who actually make the music.

On December 1 The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the RIAA is currently petitioning the panel of federal government Copyright Royalty Judges to lower the rates paid to publishers and songwriters for use of lyrics and melodies in applications like cell phone ring tones and other digital recordings. The last time the American government set the rate was in 1981, but since that time, the RIAA argues in its petition, a lot has changed.

"While record companies and music publishers were able to agree on royalty rates during that 25-year period, the assumptions on which those decisions were based have changed beyond recognition," the RIAA brief reads.

There's no doubt about that, but it's obnoxious to see the RIAA finally acknowledge that fact only when it serves to aid their cause rather than that of consumers who rejected CD-based distribution years before the music industry got onboard the digital distribution train. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the RIAA maintains that in the modern period when piracy began devastating the record industry (Highly debatable. Sales went down, but a direct relationship to piracy is not proven. -ed.) profits to publishers from sales of ringtones and other "innovative services" grew dramatically. Record industry executives believe this to be cause to advocate reducing the royalties paid to the artists who wrote the original music.

As quoted by The Hollywood Reporter,"Mechanical royalties currently are out of whack with historical and international rates," RIAA executive VP and General Counsel Steven Marks said. "We hope the judges will restore the proper balance by reducing the rate and moving to a more flexible percentage rate structure so that record companies can continue to create the sound recordings that drive revenues for music publishers."

The language of this statement reveals a great deal about who the RIAA is looking out for, and it's not artists. Couched in terms of apparent necessity, the RIAA's is insisting that the real musicians be paid less so that the record companies can continue to "drive revenues." If piracy really is devastating the recording industry and cell phone ringtones are one of the remaining highly profitable distributed mediums, should the RIAA really be trying to ensure that musicians be paid less for them while they're already hurting from lost revenue on album sales? At best the RIAA is kicking artists when they're down via this action, and at worst has fully revealed that despite repeated claims that artists need to be protected from piracy, the organization is very much the tool of the major labels and publishers who have famously never really cared about the artists in the first place.

Tactics like this raise serious concerns for the future of interoperable DRMs and any trend towards more rapid acceptance of new technology and the demands it imposes upon the music distribution industry. If the RIAA is nothing but a litigious arm of the stodgy business men in the music industry who can't see past a perceived necessity of protecting established revenue streams rather than pursuing innovation and listening consumers' demands, it seems doubtful that the litany of complications currently facing consumers who demand flexibility in managing their legally acquired digital content will be resolved anytime soon.